Natural Disasters & Catastrophic Events
When nature unleashed its fury, from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes to dust storms and tsunamis, and how people lived through it.
- Disasters
- Volcanoes
- Pandemics
- Catastrophe
- Survival
Some of the stories included
The San Andreas Fault: California's Sleeping GiantThe San Andreas Fault, the boundary where two tectonic plates grind past each other beneath California, and why scientists expect another big earthquake.
The Boxing Day TsunamiHow the December 2004 Sumatra earthquake set off the deadliest tsunami on record, what happened from Aceh to Thailand and Somalia, and the Indian Ocean warning system built afterwards.
El Niño: The Phenomenon That Changes World WeatherHow a periodic warming of the Pacific, first noted by Peruvian fishermen in the 19th century, can trigger global extreme weather events.
Lituya Bay: The 524-Metre WaveA fisherman and his 7-year-old son rode a wave in Lituya Bay that climbed 524 meters up a mountain, and both lived.
The Ring of FireThe Pacific Ring of Fire is a 40,000km belt where 90% of earthquakes occur, its mechanism revealed by two giant 1960s quakes.
The Dust BowlIn the 1930s, drought and the over-ploughing of the Great Plains led to huge dust storms, Black Sunday, mass migration west and new federal soil conservation programmes.
TunguskaThe 1908 explosion over Siberia that flattened 80 million trees and left no crater, inspiring modern planetary defense.
PompeiiThe AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius buried Pompeii, a catastrophe witnessed and recorded by Roman author Pliny the Younger.
The San Francisco EarthquakeOn April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude quake hit San Francisco, but it was the fire that followed that destroyed 80% of the city.
The Eruption of KrakatoaThe 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia: the loudest sound in recorded history, tsunamis that killed about 36,000 people, and ash that turned skies red around the world.
The Missoula Floods and the Scablands HereticGeologist J Harlen Bretz was called a heretic for his theory of a megaflood that carved Washington's Scablands, a theory rejected for decades.
The Asteroid That Killed the DinosaursA thin clay layer identified in 1980 explains why the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago: a city-sized asteroid impact.
Mount Pelée: The Prisoner Who SurvivedLudger Sylbaris survived three days in a Saint-Pierre dungeon cell after Mount Pelée destroyed the city in 1902.
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